Jon, list,
Well, this is just out of intuition: I would say, that "pure mind" or "disembodied spirit" is not 3ns, but 1ns: Possibility. Possibility is a state, not a process, so it does not depend on time. Maybe even not on space? But a 3ns includes 2ns, reaction, and reaction is a process in time and space.
On the other hand, one might argue, that a possibility includes the foreseeing of reactions. So it ideationally includes it, and is based on 3ns, so to say, that there cannot be a 1ns without a 3ns.
So maybe you are right, that there must be a "pure" mind which is 3ns. But how can it be pure, if 3ns includes 2ns? Which is not pure, but brute?
To solve this paradoxon, there are two ways: Either that there never has been a beginning, as the buddhists say, or there is and has always been a God preceeding everything. But that would just be a regress, not an explanation. God cannot be explained.Trying to explain God would be blasphemy anyway for belief, so what only remains regarding this topic is belief. Belief, I guess, is that what cannot be talked about, and Wittgenstein said that it should be shut up about. Not that I agree, I am against thinking bans.
I think that it is reasonable and good to believe in God, but impossible to use God for argumentation.
Likewise, I think it is futile to discuss about whether mind and matter are depending on each other, or there can be a mind without matter. It is the same question like that, whether the buddhists or the theists are right, or whether there has been a God preceeding the universe or not. You just can not know, and never will know, so the discussion is not leading anywhere. and: What would be the benefit, if the discussion would come to an end? None. Even the question whether we exist on after death does not depend on it.
Best,
Helmut
Helmut, List:
On the contrary, according to Peirce, the necessary being of pure mind (3ns) does not require time, space, or matter.
CSP: If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was in the beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no reaction [2ns] and no quality [1ns], no matter [2ns], no consciousness [1ns], no space and no time, but just nothing at all. Not determinately nothing. For that which is determinately not A supposes the being of A in some mode. Utter indetermination. But a symbol alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute beginning, is a symbol [3ns]. That is the way in which the beginning of things can alone be understood. (EP 2:322; 1904)
CSP: Thus, He [God] is so much like a mind [3ns], and so little like a singular Existent (meaning by an Existent, or object that Exists, a thing subject to brute constraints, and reacting with all other Existents [2ns],) and so opposed in His Nature to an ideal possibility [1ns], that we may loosely say that He is a Spirit, or Mind [3ns]. (R 843:27[5]; 1908)
CSP: A full exposition of the pragmaticistic definition of Ens necessarium would require many pages; but some hints toward it may be given. A disembodied spirit, or pure mind, has its being out of time, since all that it is destined to think is fully in its being at any and every previous time. (CP 6.490; 1908)
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 5:32 PM Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
List,I think, Edwina is right, because anything that happens, like an action of a mind, requires time, and time needs a scale, and a scale needs boundary conditions. These may be a standstill on one side, and light velocity, or something else, maybe infinity, on the other. So i guess, there cannot be a mind at work (at some certain, or any, speed) without the concept of standstill or effeteness, which would be matter. Also, a mind does not only require time, but space too, and space and matter are two things that, according to Einstein, are prerequisites for each other, as you, I forgot who, already have mentioned.Best,Helmut
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
